What are/were the best sounding cheap components you have ever had?

Gifts, yard sales, inheritances, not the same as buying 'less costly' new and it sounded great.

Then there is unintended LUCK.

I needed a front loading TT for the Garage Shop system to stack stuff, keep dual cassette in for nostalgia and home made tapes. Sony PS FL-1, P mount.

I planned on getting it, converting the P mount with a 1/2" adapter so I could buy a better advanced stylus cartridge for it.

Darn thing arrived with a P Mount Shibata! AT 485U (didn't know they made them).

got what I wanted by pure luck

most similar I can find is this modified version, AT body, bonded shibata tip

This is great stuff but what it makes me want to weep for is all the stuff in the last 50 years I've either left behind or given away to kids, step kids, grandkids, storage spaces never saw again and etc. Klipsch speakers, Tannoy speakers, old subs, cheap power conditioners, cables, cords and connects I may have paid a fortune for. o and a Krell 2250 I traded to Peachtree for $900. Do I miss it, I dunno I never had a Pre that worked with it anyway. Another trip down memory lane-Peace Out Bros,

A speaker system that I still have in my bedroom is the Fulton FMI 80’s. I use it with vintage Harmon-Kardon 430 twin-powered receiver…it’s still very musical.

@nicolelynn_94115: Oh man, I forgot about the FMI 80! Talk about value!! I didn’t have the 80, but I had Robert Fulton’s Model J, which employed the 80 as it’s midrange reproducer. For highs it was the RTR ESL tweeter box (containing 6 ESL tweeters, the same ones David Wilson used in his original WAMM), for lows a transmissionline-loaded dynamic woofer. I don’t remember the price of the 80 (something like $200?) but in 1974 the Model J was priced at $1200/pr, itself good value

By the way, Robert Fulton was also an excellent recording engineer. His ARK label LP's feature fantastic recorded sound, with superb inner detail and natural timbres. His recordings are exclusively of local Minnesota choirs and church organists, good ones.

KEF Corelli speakers knocked me out of the park when I wandered into a high end joint and listened to them after auditioning mediocre speakers at a Pacific Stereo. Was it at Northridge Audio? Anyway, it re-lit the high-end spark I got from my father when I was a kid. The spark hasn't faded since.